TLDR 2025-02-19

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THINKING MACHINES LAB IS EX-OPENAI CTO MIRA MURATI'S NEW STARTUP

OpenAI's former CTO Mira Murati's new startup, Thinking Machines Lab, has come out of stealth. The startup intends to build tooling to make AI work for peoples' unique needs and goals and to create AI systems that are more widely understood, customizable, and generality capable than those currently available. It will focus on building multimodal systems that can adapt to the full spectrum of human expertise and enable broader applications. Murati joins a growing list of former OpenAI execs who have launched startups.

OPENAI BOARD CONSIDERS SPECIAL VOTING POWERS TO PREVENT ELON MUSK TAKEOVER

OpenAI is considering granting new voting rights to its nonprofit board to help it fight the unsolicited takeover bid from Elon Musk. Giving the nonprofit's board outsized voting power would ensure it retains control of the restructured company and is able to overrule other investors, ensuring OpenAI can fight off hostile bids from outsiders. OpenAI could also consider a plan that would let shareholders buy up additional shares at a discount to fend off hostile takeovers.

SCIENTISTS CREATED THE LIGHTEST AND STRONGEST NANOMATERIAL EVER

Researchers at the University of Toronto have created a new material with the toughness of steel that weighs about as much as foam. They used AI to recognize the best configurations of nanostructures to create the tough and impossibly light material. The new nanomaterial can be mass-produced, unlike its predecessors. The lightweight nature of the material could result in more comfortable prosthetics and implants and more efficient vehicles.

AI USED TO DESIGN A MULTI-STEP ENZYME THAT CAN DIGEST SOME PLASTICS

AI-driven protein design has enabled the possibility of creating things unlike anything found in nature. Scientists have successfully created an enzyme with the potential to digest plastics. Breaking down ester bonds in plastics requires four steps - getting AI to design a protein with the right configuration to do one of these steps is easy, but having it cycle through all four is much harder. The scientists overcame challenges by adding more AI models and eventually designed an esterase capable of digesting the bonds in PET, a common plastic.

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MY LLM CODEGEN WORKFLOW ATM

This article discusses a workflow that uses large language models for code generation (LLM codegen) that has been effective for building many small products. The workflow involves brainstorming a spec, making a plan, and then executing that plan using LLM codegen. The process is repeated until magic happens.

KAFKA AT THE LOW END: HOW BAD CAN IT GET?

Kafka does poorly as a job queue. It unfairly assigns jobs to workers, even if other workers have nothing to do. Kafka is not a bad tool, it is just not designed for low volume - it was designed for scenarios where a conventional single-node message broker can't keep up. If that speed isn't required, then it's better to use a conventional broker with more suitable features (at least until Queues for Kafka comes along).

THE ONE AI TO RULE THEM ALL

The next AI model war may be upon us, but this time it will be a smaller one as the gains, while real, have been increasingly expensive and granular. We are seemingly reaching parity among the players. While they all have more specific areas of focus and subfeatures, they are all trying to consolidate their products to simplify them for everyday use. This article ranks current AI offerings from a pure consumer perspective.

THE MARKETING GENIUS OF BRYAN JOHNSON

Bryan Johnson's Don't Die lifestyle has grabbed the world's attention. Johnson stands out - no one else is making content about not dying. His 'Don't Die' slogan is hard to scroll past, short, and snappy. Johnson doesn't try to appeal to everyone - his extreme lifestyle polarizes people, but he only needs a small number of fanatical fans. This article looks at Johnson's marketing tactics, which have resulted in 1,440,000 YouTube subscribers, 503,000 followers on X, and 1,500,000 Instagram followers.

TODAY WE'RE OPEN-SOURCING R1 1776, A VERSION OF THE DEEPSEEK-R1 MODEL THAT HAS BEEN POST-TRAINED TO PROVIDE UNBIASED, ACCURATE, AND FACTUAL INFORMATION

Perplexity trained an unbiased, accurate, and factual version of DeepSeek-R1 and open sourced it.

FIRST LOOK AT TESLA'S FIRST ‘PUBLIC' ELECTRIC SEMI TRUCK CHARGING STATION

Tesla's first permanent public Megacharger station will have 12 stalls with Megachargers that can accommodate trucks and their trailers.

A YEAR OF UV: PROS, CONS, AND SHOULD YOU MIGRATE

uv is sufficient most of the time, so developers should always try it first, then use something else or find a workaround if it doesn't work.

FRANCE RUNS FUSION REACTOR FOR RECORD 22 MINUTES

X DOUBLES ITS PREMIUM+ PLAN PRICES AFTER XAI RELEASES GROK 3

X's Premium+ subscription plan is now $50 per month, or $350 a year.

HUAWEI'S TRIFOLD PHONE LAUNCHES OUTSIDE OF CHINA